


You're My Morphine

by I_Weave_Dreams



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 10:36:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18259559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Weave_Dreams/pseuds/I_Weave_Dreams
Summary: AKA: How Ronan And Adam Flirt With Each Other While Adam's In College





	You're My Morphine

**Author's Note:**

> I was in the middle of writing the second part to my Pynch "Hypothermia" story when this idea popped into my brain and aaadfghs I just couldn't help it; I had to stop and crank this out. Enjoy! <3

It should not have surprised Adam that flirting with Ronan Lynch was never going to be a “normal” thing. Honestly, he hadn’t really expected it at all. Adam, who normally went the traditional route of sending flowers and telling girls in his yawning Henrietta accent that he thought they were cute, didn’t know what to expect with Ronan Lynch. He’d been attracted to Adam without Adam having to do any of the attracting. 

It wasn’t until after the first week at college when Adam received a text message from Ronan: A picture of a car crash with the words **“Thinking of you”** written underneath, did Adam realize this was going to be a _thing_ now. 

He’d been walking between two buildings, going from his Calc 1 class to Global Econ, when he’d seen the message. Adam had come to a halt. And that was before he’d even opened the text. Ronan Lynch. Texting. Sure, they’d talked about it over the summer. Brief exchanges that were closer to vague agreements to keep in touch over the phone. Neither boy was graced in the ways of words and communication; they left such hurdles behind in favor of cannonballs into man made pools and building dangerously high bonfires that looked like miniature burning worlds. 

Adam didn’t know what jolted him more. The picture of the car crash or Ronan’s words beneath it. Or maybe it was the startling feeling of once again being _known._ It should have been an ugly thing. A car crash. Something worthy of fear and sadness, even anger and reproach. But mixed with Ronan’s intention, it was, well, so _them_. Two impossible things built from gasoline, spare parts, and moving forward on sheer force of will alone, coming together. It was a disaster at the worst of times and recklessly extraordinary at the best of times.

Just like a car crash.

Neither of them could help being drawn to the beautiful tragedy of it. The forbidden desire for it. Each other.

The next day Adam sent Ronan a picture of roadkill: a snake’s head separated from its body a foot down the road with the words: **“Take care of yourself”** underneath.

It was most _definitely_ a thing after that. 

In retrospect, Ronan’s brand of flirting had always been…unconventional. So Adam shouldn’t have been surprised. It’d included breaking into Adam’s shitbox car and leaving magical hand cream on the seat like some hooligan version of Santa. 

Not to mention the mixed tape with that godawful Murder Squash song on it. Which was why it was in the ‘Not to Mention’ category. That was better left forgotten. Ronan’s brand of flirting also meant stolen glances when he thought Adam wasn’t looking. Unnecessarily long held hand contact. Breaking and entering into Adam’s personal space to gaze into his eyes and check for any signs of possession after Adam recounted his tale of his wandering eye and hands during the whole Demon Invading Cabeswater thing. To be fair, Adam had invited him in.

It was Ronan calling him a ‘shithead’ instead of ‘Sweetheart’. It was Ronan refusing to let Adam shower after his shifts at Boyd’s, wanting to relish the scent of gasoline mixed with sweat that was Adam’s personal brand of cologne. It was Ronan taking Adam’s grease stained hands, black smears against Henrietta golden skin, and running them down his own pale Celtic skin. Fingers curling around Adam’s like a puppet master, making Adam’s nails dig into his skin as Ronan dragged them down his own chest. It was Ronan pressing Adam’s long, elegant fingers to his lips, Ronan’s dark lashes fluttering shut.

Ronan, who was 90% physical, needing to posture and gesture violently in order to feel heard. Understood. How were they going to survive a six-hour distance? It was a question that begged at the end of Adam’s tongue the closer it got to the end of the summer. But he’d never quite set it free before he’d left for college. 

Ronan’s reply came the next day. It was a line of gasoline, set ablaze. Gray skies rumbled overhead, threatening a storm. It read: **“You look good naked”**

Adam, who’d been in the middle of the common room, surrounded by two people he’d recently become acquainted with when he’d answered an ad for Global Econ study partners, had flushed red. He hadn’t expected their text relationship to reach that level so quickly. Or at all. Though that didn’t mean he hadn’t secretly hoped for it.

It _shouldn’t_ have been so sexy. It shouldn’t have caused Adam’s blood to heat, to rev. It shouldn’t have reminded him of large, work roughened hands running down his body, callouses scraping at his hips. Teeth nipping at tender flesh. Belts being ripped away by impatient hands. 

But, Jesus. Christ. It did.

Adam excused himself from the study group in a hurry. It was a week before he could show his face in front of them again.

They spoke on the phone every few days. When Adam had time. When Ronan could be bothered to pick up. It was hard lining up their schedules. Ronan, who used to never sleep, found a somewhat steady rhythm thanks to the toll all the farm work took on his body. Plus, he needed to dream a new Cabeswater. And Adam, who slept when he could, which often meant face down in some textbook he’d been reading for hours, tried to find what time he could to spare.

The texts became like lifelines for them. Anchors in unpredictable waters. 

Sometimes it was a battle for who could be more witty. A challenge that thrilled both of them. For Ronan, it was like watching the MPH on the speedometer climb. Heart pounding, flooding with gasoline, with each acceleration.

For Adam it was feeling his body untether itself. Shedding the ties of responsibility and worry and pressure. It was freeing. 

Sometimes, it was simple. Filler. Just a reminder that someone was on the receiving end of these texts. Sometimes it was fire. Shuddered breaths under roaming hands and hungry mouths. Sometimes it was a laugh choked from a surprised throat. Sometimes it was comfort. A feeling of _I’m here I’m here I’m here_ even though they were hundreds of miles apart.

On a Tuesday morning during a trip to the city, Adam sent Ronan a picture of a crime scene sectioned off with stark yellow caution tape: **“What’d you do?”**

He’d meant it to be funny. A little too obvious to be witty, but he thought Ronan would appreciate it all the same. 

Except Ronan responded with a picture of two mourning doves in shades of soft gray, curled around each other. They were settled in a nest of twigs and laundry fluff, set against a watery sunrise at the Barns. Ronan wrote: **“Crime of Passion”**

It was a surprising show of tenderness. It was like a slight of hand. A magician’s trick. Adam blinked. And blinked again. Expecting the image - the text - to disappear. But it didn’t. 

Adam’s heart did a strange chugging/surging painful-pleasurable twist sort of thing. He clicked on the picture and hit save on his phone. 

Adam’s first year of college wore on.

Ronan sent Adam pictures of:

Piles of cow shit: **“Free will is bullshit. Do they force feed this at your cafeteria? Or is it an elective course?**

Adam had scowled at his phone. He didn’t respond for two days.

Another picture of cow shit but in the evening: **“It’s all these bastards do”**

Chainsaw picking at the guts of some dead animal: **“Missing you”**

A picture of a tool box: **“Is this me or you?”**

Adam responded with a picture of a wrench: **“I’m the mechanic. You’re the tool”**

One of the smaller barns on fire: **“I got bored”**

A pale stretch of skin that ran for miles and miles. No caption. 

6 empty bottles of beer: **Just getting started**

Followed by a three-hour long phone call, 5 more beers deep, that involved Ronan drunkly reciting old irish jigs he’d learned as a child. Except with a lot more inventive swearing. 

Adam sent Ronan pictures of: 

A truly awful bronze statue of some college alumni who’d donated a lot of money: **“Reminds me of you”**

A picture of pale, bleeding knuckles: **“Miss you”**

Followed quickly by: **“I Googled those”**

So Ronan wouldn’t get jealous of him oogling someone else’s bloody knuckles. 

A picture of a sculpture of a human baby with the tail of a monkey and the head of a pug: **“Found this at the campus art gallery. Have you been dreaming again?”**

Ronan responded with: **“How’d you know I’ve been dreaming of you? Still a magician”**

Because Ronan was a dick.

A picture of Adam’s own hands covered in carnival shades of blue and red and yellow and green paint: _**“Tibi”**_

 **For you.** In Latin. Because Adam knew how much Ronan worshipped his hands.

And then:

A picture of Adam giving the camera the middle finger. And Adam sucking on said middle finger. 

Because Adam was also a dick. 

And a tease.

And he _loved_ to win.

Ronan responded with: **“I’m driving down this weekend”**

It’s days spent together, speaking real words to each other not over a phone. Touching. Tasting. Laughing. Feeling. Relishing. Consuming. Conquering.

They don’t get to spend time together often. But what time they do have, they devour.

The second year of Adam’s undergrad education features a more grown form of picture taking.

Ronan sends pictures of grand buildings and historical landmarks as he ventures across the country to gain knowledge from farmers across America. He writes: **“Shit you like”**

He writes this under most pictures he sends to Adam. Because he’s right. It is shit Adam would like. Adam smiles at his phone. He ignores the ribbing his friends give him. 

Adam sends Ronan pictures on a camera he’s borrowed from his friend who’s an art major, and learned to upload to his phone. He learns how to do long exposures and other effects on the expensive camera even though he should really be studying. He takes pictures of the sky. A busy street at night with its universe of lights. A fist fight outside of a bar. A drag race between rich ivy league kids. A college party from the outside looking in. And the inside looking out. All of these taken with effects that enhance the chaos of the situation. Turning the ordinary into the impossible. Raging worlds in a single shot. A catastrophic explosion of colors. 

He captions them with: **“You”**

And Adam isn’t wrong about a single picture he sends. They’re all Ronan. 

The grin that slices across Ronan’s face as he flicks through the pictures in the dark of his bedroom at night is pleased at feeling known.

It’s in the third year when some shithead sends Ronan a picture of Adam sleeping, a blanket draped over him, on a fancy leather couch after he’d finally tried vodka for the first time at a party with the caption:  
**“Your boyfriends lips r soft – J”**

The message had been deleted from Adam’s phone. So Adam didn’t know what was happening until Ronan showed up at his dorm door 12 hours later, shoving his way in. 

He’d always known other people were intimidated by Ronan Lynch. The harsh cut of his jaw, the promise of _“I’ll Fuck You Up”_ in the curve of his lips. That he was the savage kind of beautiful, like a rebelling angel. Adam didn’t know if it was the shaved head or the leather jacket or the malicious way he took on the world that made others wary of Ronan immediately upon meeting him. 

Like animal instinct kicking in: You were prey. Ronan Lynch was the predator. Top of the food chain.

Adam had never been afraid of Ronan. Ever. But when Ronan stood in his dorm like a dark shadow eating away at the sun, threatening an impending storm, biting out the words: “Who. The _fuck_. Is ‘J’?”

A shiver pricked its way across Adam’s skin. A fever chill. He was deadly hot and icy cool all at once. 

It took days for them to sort out that mess. Because the message had been deleted from Adam’s phone. And Adam barely _remembered_ that party and jesus _fuck_ he was never drinking again. But he was adamant that he had never allowed someone to test out the softness of his lips. He wasn’t a fucking _idiot_. Or a monster. 

But Ronan was a creature of raging emotions. He couldn’t help but experience everything all at once. Be it anger or love or passion or hatred or disgust or happiness or rage. It was a haze, a thick veil he couldn’t see through until he’d been beaten to near death with the truth.

It was harsh words spoken in accusation. Ronan. Jaws set in hurt disguised as bravado as trust was challenged. Adam. Because just because they’d promised to love each other didn’t mean they couldn’t hurt each other just as easily. 

It was a picture sent of ‘J’ AKA: ‘Jacobi’, a brutish Armenian guy with a shitty hair cut wearing expensive clothes that read: **“This is ‘J’. I tracked him down. A piece of shit frat boy from Omega Delta Shit For Brains Kai whose party I drank at last week. He stole everyone’s phones and sent shithead texts to all of their bf/gfs. I can provide witnesses and references if you require.”**

Adam added the last bit as a _fuck you_ to Ronan because it was a Gansey thing to say. Witnesses and references. But Adam didn’t care. He was _pissed_. Because Ronan really thought he’d do something like that to him. And Ronan couldn’t articulate that he’d always had a secret fear Adam would find an educated rich fuck from university he’d prefer over a high school drop out farmer from his shitty hometown. 

It was a picture of Jacobi’s bloody face sporting a Lynch Brother Special of a broken nose and a busted lip with the words: **“I believe you”**  
Ronan never sent it. 

It took Ronan sending Adam pictures of old, ugly dead philosophers and quotes about the hubris of man and dumb facts about secret societies at Adam’s university that Ronan had definitely not spent hours and goddamn _hours_ researching just to impress Adam with, for Adam to finally respond to Ronan’s texts. 

ADAM: **“I’m studying”**

Which, for Adam, meant ‘fuck off’.

But he added a picture of the top half of his hand resting on an open page of his text book.

Ronan took that as a maybe in terms of forgiveness.

So, of course, he drove six and half hours straight through the night to Adam’s college. Because it was all or nothing with Ronan Lynch. 

It took another week for Adam to answer the door when Ronan knocked. A shadow of growth dogged Ronan’s chin from his stay at a nearby hotel. It was either the rugged survivor look Ronan was sporting that somehow still made him roguishly handsome or the bag of greasy burgers and fries from Freddie’s clutched in his hand, but Adam finally allowed Ronan into his dorm room.

It was the fourth and final year of Adam’s undergrad studies. Ronan was only marginally better at flirting. 

Which was to say he dreamt Adam useful tools to help him study for college that didn’t feel like charity or cheating. It was dreamt pens that never ran out of ink. Pens that autocorrected misspelled words as Adam wrote them (Because Ronan could be shockingly thoughtful). An alarm that shouted embarrassing secrets about Adam until he hurried to slam the off button (Because Ronan could be a _dick_ ). Chapstick that tasted like Ronan’s lips (Because Ronan could also be a selfish and possessive creature).

It was Adam sending selfies to Ronan on a semi-regular basis because Adam couldn’t afford a laptop with a webcam and he refused to let Ronan buy him one. But he knew how much Ronan craved the physical. And a picture was as close as they could get 9 times out of 10. 

So Adam indulged even though he hated taking photos of himself and it ate away at his phone minutes. Because it made Ronan, impossible Ronan, happy. Somehow.

Then it was Adam graduating. And deciding to take an internship in downtown Virginia so he was only an hour and a half away from Ronan and the Barns. Really, though, it was a great internship. 

Soon flirting was Ronan bringing Chainsaw into Adam’s ‘No Pets Allowed’ workplace and forcing Adam to take a break for lunch. And not stopping Chainsaw as she flew onto Adam’s coworker’s shoulder to pick at her dangling earrings. “They were shit earrings anyway,” was Ronan’s reply as he fed Chainsaw a fry as a reward for her good service. Adam, who agreed about Cheryl’s earrings being shit, just threw a fry at Ronan’s head. 

It was Adam sending Ronan a picture of an abandoned switchblade he saw in an alley on his way to a local coffee shop with the caption: **“How many times do I have to tell you to pick up your shit, Lynch?”**

It was a brand of flirting that made sense to no one except Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish. Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch. It was rough and unintelligible and fire and smoke. It was something they both craved. An addiction. A shot of morphine to their veins when what they really craved was a steady drip. A constant supply sent straight to their vital organs. 

Anything less would result in withdrawal symptoms. 

They were both addicts for each other’s personal brand of morphine.

And they wouldn’t have it any other fucking way.

**Author's Note:**

> *The line about the mechanic and the tool was related to Maggie’s tweet of someone saying her favorite ship name for Adam & Ronan was ‘The Mechanic and his tool’.
> 
> *Also, that “art sculpture” is in reference to that god awful Super Bowl commercial a couple years ago *gouges eyes out*
> 
>  
> 
> **Thank you for reading! I had a lot of fun writing this. This is totally how I imagine our murder boys flirting. Please leave a review if you enjoyed this. It means a lot <3**


End file.
